From the very moment it launched last April, Super Adventure Box was an immediate hit. The 8-bit style graphics, quirky sound-effects, and retro platforming action provided players with some of the most engaging and memorable content to date. Now, after what seemed like an eternity, Super Adventure Box is back with even more content than before. Check out the press release below, then dig into the gallery by clicking on the banner above.

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BELLEVUE, Wash. – Aug. 27, 2013: ArenaNet today announced the return of Super Adventure Box, the wildly popular, 8-bit-inspired dungeon, to Guild Wars 2 starting Sept. 3. The new and improved version of this “game within a game” offers more zones, modes and rewards, and will go live with Guild Wars 2’s next update, continuing ArenaNet’s pattern of delivering players exciting new content every two weeks, a pace unparalleled by Western competitors.

Super Adventure Box originated as an April Fools’ Day joke earlier this year, but quickly became a fan favorite with its pixelated 3D graphics, retro music and nostalgic gameplay that stirred memories of video games from yesteryear. Designed in-game by Moto, a crafty asura, to be a virtual reality simulator to educate the younger generation, Super Adventure Box will take players back to school with new and more difficult challenges.

Players can get an early look at the update by joining a livestream with ArenaNet developers on Tuesday, Sept. 3, at noon (PDT) on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2.

New Events

Continued Education: Players can continue their studies by going deeper into World 2, traveling through the Rapids, Pain Cliffs and Storm Top, where they’ll meet their lethal final exam in the form of the Storm Wizard. Unlocking new items and upgrades along the way will be the key to getting ahead.

Tribulation Mode: Moto’s newest challenge teaches resilience and non-linear thinking. Players will learn that life isn’t easy in this new, ridiculously difficult mode for all zones in Worlds 1 and 2.

New Rewards

Super Weapon Set: Players can acquire a stylish new look for their weapons by trading in Bauble Bubbles to earn the rest of the Super Weapon Skins.

King Toad and Storm Wizard Weapons: Showing their prowess in Super Adventure Box, players will earn the materials necessary for King Toad and Storm Wizard weapons.

Mini Princess Miya: Players can create their own mini Princess Miya by combining in the forge a mini Moto and elements of Princess Miya’s outfit.

New Features

Craft Ascended Weapons: New recipes and materials will be hidden around the world, and a new skill cap of 500 will be introduced for the Weaponsmith, Artificer and Huntsman crafting disciplines. Players crafting their way to 500 will become Grandmaster Crafters and can learn the secrets of crafting Ascended weapons.

Legendary Weapon Updates:Legendary weapons are getting a stat boost and an Offensive Infusion slot to align with the new Ascended weapons! Legendaries are also receiving additional functionality: When out of combat, Legendary weapon bearers will be able to choose between different stat combinations for your weapon. And to top it all off, many Legendaries are getting some aesthetic upgrades!

Account-Wide Magic Find:We’re removing Magic Find as an equipment stat. Instead, your Magic Find will now be an account-wide bonus that applies to all of your characters. You can boost your account’s Magic Find using Essences of Luck, which can be earned by salvaging Fine or Masterwork items.

This morning Colin Johanson answered a question from the community about if there are any plans to revitalize Orr. What was his answer? To put it simply, yes.

There are indeed!

We’ve had a lot of feedback from folks asking for more difficult places in the game that can be more rewarding to play in. Our intent with Orr (and Southsun) is to create areas that are more fun/difficult for groups to play through event chains, with events that scale better when larger groups of players show up than the rest of the game, rather than the old versions that fell apart when more than a group or so of players showed up.

Thus the continual updates this year to make the creatures in Orr have more varied skills, the swap over to the new event scaling system that creates veterans/champions as content scales up, and the updates to Southsun to have more playable content. The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.

We want champions to be more rewarding, so places like Orr/Southsun where events can scale up to create champions become one of the more fun and rewarding places in the game to play, since events there can be champion on demand generators to an extent. We’d also like to tie in additional unique rewards to the temple chains, to make those more worthwhile and differentiate them from the giant boss encounters (which we’ll also be upgrading to be more exciting) to give a reason to do each in a day. We’d also like to add more value and use to blue/green items, so things like killing vets feels more rewarding when those type of items drop when doing those events in Orr as well.

And of course, we’d like to remove culling from PvE as well so you can experience these events in all their glory when they do scale up.

We’ll go into specifics on all of this in an updated version of the Gw2 in 2013 blog post sometime in July focusing on our plan for the 2nd half of the year and how we plan to improve the core game experience. As a reminder, you can find the original detailing our high level plan here: https://www.guildwar...e-months-ahead/

He later on mentions that there are no plans to add new currencies because the game already has plenty of those. He also goes on to answer another question about reverting the changes that made Orr empty in the first place:

It’s certainly one of the options we discussed, however it brings us right back to the initial problem we set out to solve, a large part of the player base was asking for more exciting and difficult open world content in our top end areas. The original version of Orr events were painfully easy, they didn’t scale well, mobs evaporated into thin-air and you had to race to even get a hit in before they died to get credit for kills.

The ideal balance point we’d like to have is with the scaling and more exciting encounters we have now, so it’s actually fun and at least remotely challenging to play there, but also rewarding as well. The reward systems we want to roll out to support those areas are part of a larger reward revamp and aren’t done yet, but are on their way and tie more strongly into the comprehensive system we’re trying to develop, thus the swap.

In regards to regular mobs hitting for insane damage, we did find a bug about a month ago causing many of them to scale way out of proportion, it has since been fixed and normal bosses in Orr should be doing damage on par with other bosses in the game. If you find any that are still nutso, please give us a shout, the intent is they should be fun/challenging, not one-hit-wonders.

Hope that helps give more insight into what we’re trying to do here, these changes are directly tied to feedback we’ve received. You don’t have to agree with them, but it’s important we explain why we’re doing them so folks understand the end goal, which I don’t believe we’ve reached yet until the rewards are there as well.

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

Part of the reason I started playing Guild Wars 2 is that it was much more accessible. There was no end-game gear grind, there was a unique event and non-quest questing system, but then you hit 80 and after a while everything gets repeatitive. A plateau is hit where there's no room for advancement. Perhaps that's by design but, for me anyway, it gets rather stale. There's nothing to aspire to aside from what cool weapon and armor skins you can collect. Even in the Fractals you get margainally better gear that has the main added bonuses of allowing you to progress further into that particular "dungeon". Adding ranks in WvW is a step in the right direction but by and large Guild Wars 2 has become fantasy combat themed dress-up and I've grown bored of it.

Am I wrong?

The reason why cosmetic progression is not working for Arena Net is because there is none in the first place.

I have been playing Guild Wars 2 since launch, my first class was a thief. On my roaming times in WvW I hardly met any engineers and if I did, it felt from my side that they were a bad class. Skip a few months later and I got curious about the class, were they really this bad? So I had to try one out and this is what came out.

My Engineer Overview

● Acces to many offensive/defensive utilties due to kits.

● Capable of placing many different conditions within a few seconds.

● Good survivability.

My Engineer Strengths

● Being able to stack many conditions in short amount of time, with a decent duration.

● When needed able to block for 5 seconds + 3 seconds ranged attacks.

● Lots of regen/healing power with short cooldown.

● When needed able to burst healing, with multiple blast finishers.

● Permanent Vigor/Swiftness.

● Able to get reliable stealth.

● Decent toughness, able to survive most burst.

● Rocket boots!

My Engineer Weaknesses

● Great sword mesmers, but that might be just me.

● Not the best mobility, compared to other classes. (espcially when ganked by multiple players)

● Full evade s/d thieves ( Unblockable/able to steal all your boons and evading most of the time. You require to play perfectly to win.)

● No stunbreaker. (this is my personal preference to gain more mobility)

As an engineer you are able to do massive damage when your enemies are close and far away. We are not limited to 10 skills, thanks to kits. Each kit gives us 5 new skills, which all have their strengths and weaknesses, but thanks to 0,5 cooldown on kit switching we are able to constantly switch between kits to get the necessarily skills to take out our enemies.

Important info about conditions:

Poison:
Lowers healing by 33%, good versus classes with a lot of healing and decent damage.

Confusion:
Confusion deals damage based on every skill use (auto attacks included) and dodges! With 5 stacks of confusion every skill/dodge(when traited, example: Ele evasive arcana) the enemy uses will deal them 755 damage.

Weapon choice:

What do I take?

For a condition engineer I personally feel that there is only one good choice, pistol and shield, based on condition application and the utility. The main pistol is able to stack bleeding, blindness, confusion and poison and the shield will give you the necessary defensive power, due to blocks, ranged reflect, blast finisher and possible double daze.

Fast way of stacking bleeding, especially in combination with the sigil of Earth (60% chance on critical to inflict bleeding) Decent 900 range, good to use when other skills are on cooldown or if you are being kited around.

One of my favorite skills, decent range, I ussually use it right after my pry bar, for a nice 7 stack of confusion.

Pro tip: You are able to stack 4 stacks of confusion on each target if there are 2 targets close to each other (with the bounces).

Pro tip 2: If you are expecting a strong attack that you have to dodge, you can use the blind effect on this skill to make the enemy player miss.

Shield4.Magnetic shield: (create a magnetic field that reflects projectiles 3 seconds and can be released to push back foes)
(Second ability: Magnetic Inversion, 100 damage, knockback 300, blastfinisher)

One of our defensive abilities, best used when being shot by ranged weapons to reflect it back to opponent, one of my favorite skills to reflect is a kill shot (Make sure they haven't used signet of might, which makes their next 3 shots unblockable, you can still dodge them!).

Pro tip: When a thief uses shadow refuge, walk inside it and double click the shield to knock him out of the refuge and to give him a stealth debuff!

Pro tip 2: Use it as a blast finisher after you double clicked your healing turret for an extra area heal.

One of the best defensive skills we have in my opion, I use this mainly to stun players that get too close or interupt revives with the second ability. If you get in too much trouble you can use it for full blocking duration just make sure you don't get in melee range.

Pro tip 1: A thief is about to attack you from stealth? Predict his movements and activate the shield when you think he is about to attack you, if he does attack you he will get stunned. Then switch to grenade kit and nuke him with everything you have, if he doesn't reveal himself, but you did see the block appear he is still stunned but invisible.. do the same thing use your grenades on the location where you saw the block!

Alternatives:

With the current engineer skills and traits I do not feel that it is worth it to go for any other weapon. Rifle and secondary pistol just do not offer the same kind of utility and power for a condition engineer.

Short cooldown heal with condition removal. If you are circling around an area in combat, click it twice so both abilities activate and pick it up right after, will give you a 15 second cooldown. If you need extra burst healing, double click the ability, use the f1 right after to explode for a blast finisher, which will give you an extra ~1200 heal in aoe.

Video Guide

Pro tip: I suggest practicing this next part.. you are able to get 3 blast finishers right after the second turret ability and it has to be done in 3 seconds which is a bonus of 3,6k healing on top of the normal heal from the turret.
Turret -> second ability -> Double magnetic shield -> f1 to explode turret -> elixer gun fourth skill. I hardly use the full combo since it makes me waste a shield, but in combat I would normally run it without the magnetic shield so Turret -> second ability -> f1 to explode turret -> elixer gun fourth skill , this allows you to get ~2,400 extra healing + the fourth skill from elixer will set some distance between you and your enemy.

Current Main Kits

Kits are what makes engi's so awesome, being able to have 3 extra skill bars without cooldowns is insane! My best suggestion here is take your time to read up on every ability, learn them and practise switching between kits to get the muscle memory. My main kits currently are bomb kit for the massive utility it provides and the Tool kit. I play around with my final utility it is never the same.

Bomb Kit

Bomb kit is decent if you go with groups, small areas or spvp.

- More confusion!
- Nice cripple/root.
- Smoke field which blinds anyone who moves in it.. if you need that extra defense vs melee classes.
- F3 skill keeps enemies away from you or you can use it offensively to interupt, knockback enemies.

Pro tip: Gain area stealth by using blast finishers in the smoke field.

I ussually use the tool kit to initiate my fight, first Magnet, as soon as the target is near you use pry bar to put the confusion on your enemies, switch to pistol put another 2-4 stacks of confusion.

If you get in trouble use the shield to block attacks or use it offensively to get close to your enemy without taking damage.

Pro tip: You can use magnet to interupt enemy abilities or revives.

Alternatives

The last normal utility is up to you.

Elixer Gun

Elixer gun is amazing for fighting any type of burst class, keeping the perma weakness up lowers the enemy damage potential by a lot! With the newly added stun break on the toolbelt skill it makes it one of my top choices.

Pro tip: When using the elixer gun skill 4 for just a blast finisher and you want to stay on position, use your weapon swap key after using the jump and it will cancel out the leap.

Grenade Kit

I won't be going through each individual skill, but I will leave the basic info.

- Grenade kit is Strong long/close range damage.
- Slow projectiles easy to dodge the further the enemy is.
- Lots of conditions (Bleeding (16 3/4 seconds), Blindness (7s), Chill 2 3/4 seconds, Poison (7s)
- 1500 range, 3 grenades. Each have of the grenades has a chance to proc. the burning/bleeding from the traits on each crit, so use it when you are able.
- Grenade barrage f2 skill, awesome for bursting down close enemies or enemies hiding in refuge.

Pro tip: Use grenades when the enemies are near you for maximum damage and give them no chance to dodge your skills, chill is very effective to kite players around.

Pro tip 2: Bind the key "Look behind", when using this it will allow you to look behind yourself while still moving the same way. The reason why you want to do this is to throw grenades while running away from enemies so if they are stupid enough to chase you, you can put a lot of pressure on them or even kill them!

Pro tip 3: If you are not able to knock a thief out of refuge, use your grenades to deal massive aoe damage, make sure to start with the chill grenade to slow them so they will have a harder time to dodge the rest of your grenades.

Pro tip 4: When a player is downed use the poison grenade to slow their healing.

Elixer R

After the nerf not really worth it to use it other than the team revive. Cast time is horrible on the full endurance part of the skill

Pro tip: Use the toolbelt skill on the floor when you are about to go down, to self revive.

Rocket boots

My favorite skill insane mobility and very fun to use! It includes a blast finisher and a 6 second burning on tool belt skill. Just be careful the blast finisher on this skill is delayed it happens after you land. This also means if you use the blast finisher to stealth yourself the smoke animation won’t appear until you land, so you will be visible while you jump. Make sure to use a different blast finisher before using the rocket boots for a stealth escape.

Currently we have DPS builds to burn through mob health. If this becomes an inefficient way to kill mobs, then people will start considering other methods.

I thought the Molten Protectors in MF were a good way to encourage this, except I didn't really like the 0 damage idea. Maybe make it so that the damage reduction is much higher (66%?), but it can be removed.

So either you have DPS builds to burn through the damage reduction, Control builds to punt the Protector out of the fields, or Support builds to remove the boon. All three essentially end up with the same result, just through different ways.

We’re rolling out our first set of optimizations. This is the first in many steps involved in helping resolve issues with “skill lag.” Some players will experience a slight improvement in skill lag issues with large groups of players, while some players may also experience a slight raise in their FPS.